winter
under this stand of pine
cold folds into dark and quiet
snowmelt makes a stream
through the still heart
spring
a riot of leopard frogs
wakes in cattails,
boars snuffle
through moldering needles
mists roll off my coat
into my shoes
summer
sunlight flecks the plantation floor
bluebirds dart between boughs
and pull caterpillars from cones
cool air settles on skin
fall
a lone woodpecker trill
floats in the woods,
a prayer before sleeping
In a spray of tin plates, twisted forks,
empty cans and bits of rusted metal,
chimneys stand alone, skeletons
that grape and creeper hold aloft.
Mortarless stones, kettle handles,
iron bands from barrels
tumble toward the brook.
Children scream and shout there;
Union soldiers, too, drawn up into tree trunks—
roots grown through them—
alive again in asters and bees’ wings.
When I first met Frank,
squashed pumpkin head atop a suit,
he squinted, asked me if I was in pain.
Not like I was, I said.
We shook hands.
Well, boy, you’re in the right place.
And he patted me on the back
like I had come home.
She was 86 the day we sat in the kitchen
that smelled of ghosts, bread crumbs, and old tea.
She held the newspaper over the table,
“Look at that nigger girl.
Isn’t she pretty?”
Outside, spring threw bolts of green against the windows.
But the kitchen was dim, as always;
the drawers around us bulged with rubber bands,
old bolts, nuts, and screws.
That day, she put burned toast
out the kitchen door,
“The birds will be happy;
they don’t get much from me.”
She went to the home at 88—
$60,000 in the bank
and old notes worth some more:
burnt toast-rubber band-bolt-nut-screw money.
At her funeral, Ione, 97 too,
said grandma was the prettiest,
kindest woman she ever knew,
a good friend, generous,
always devoted to others.
I cupped Ione’s cheek
and remembered that newspaper photo.
We lit a candle, “a prayer to the Virgin,” Ione said.
I stared up at the ivory marble statue,
felt the soft warmth that radiated
from Ione’s coffee-colored skin.
The flanks of Kennesaw Mountain sparkle—
ground baptized with blood
of fertile young men with minds
blank as new tablets.
Harker and McCook,
Vaughan and Cheatem,
like all generals and men
who send children to war,
wander wildernesses, marked;
the ground above their graves barren.
In the night, dust lifts beneath the feet
of Slaves and Soldiers, dancing sons
and daughters of mothers
no longer weary.
the widow pushes her cart
out of the grocery,
lifts her face to the gray
as the rain begins
and listens to the sigh
rush through the city
William Francis Bauer
says he knows things he learned
in ports foreign and domestic
catholic boys aren’t supposed to know.
And being a sinner, he kneels,
eyes to heaven, and repents
for scourging children with rosary beads.
Falling asleep in his chair now,
he mutters about whores in San Diego,
oriental women folded in silks.
Men jump from the destroyer deck,
gulls smoked above.
Sharks flitter in PT boat wakes.
His children float through spires and pipes
of the Grand Canyon.
Spacemen bound across mushroom clouds.
Marie, Marie.
His glasses teeter on ears waving
out from laurel hair wrapped
about his sun-flecked pate—
slight sheen of oil, light fuzz, warm, taut skin—
so small for all of him.
rose of sharon
raises head to heaven
and morning glory
trumpets to honeybees
below, eyes flick under eyelids,
cats dance in your sleep
out there, under redfire gold and lupine blue,
a boy’s just run up a prairie hill—dew heavy shoes,
grasshopper in hand spitting brown and kicking—
and smelled wind from the west
heavy with soil and wheat,
combine diesel and pickup truck smoke
homeward, he watches storms curtain sunsets
from the highway overpass,
waits for thunder to shake the ground
waking, he’s swept away in dark current,
bumps over rocks at the bottom of the river
Its bloated innards set before my house—
bundles of such import,
even dogs gather once a week to see.